


relent

by youatemytailor



Series: unfinished business [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: LOTS OF LOVE!!!!!, M/M, THEY LOVE EACH OTHER LADS wow, except it's soft and they talk a lot and it takes place after don't come closer don't let go of me, it's a savannah fic again, silverflint, so if you enjoyed that you might want to take a gander at its sequel of sorts, sort of hinted childhood abuse but VERY briefly and only an allusion, sort of hinted supernatural elements but not more so than the show does tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 02:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13824441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youatemytailor/pseuds/youatemytailor
Summary: "The men seem to think we're cursed," Flint murmurs."The men always think we're cursed," Silver returns. "Fuck the men."





	relent

**Author's Note:**

> so this has been sitting in my drafts for close to 5 months. i had completely forgotten about it, left it half written and sad. when i went back to read it a few hours ago i liked it, and then the ending came to me in a premonition so there you have it. it's a sequel to my other on-the-way-to-savannah fic, [don't come closer, don't let go of me.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10771395) it picks up the day after silver and flint were in the hold sleeping together. title based off of _relent_ by ailbhe reddy, which has been my top silverflint song since last year. 
> 
> anyway i hope you enjoy! @cristina please accept this as your birthday gift since our convo spurred me on to finish it <3

The weather turns, on a fucking _dime._

 _The Lion_ is only hours outside of Savannah—nary a cloud in sight and sails full to the brim—when the temperature drops. There is no other warning; the sky takes a single shivering breath and splits wide open like a cracked skull. They are completely caught out. An impenetrable wall of rain comes down, broken only by claps of thunder loud enough to shake the masts. The ship begins to shudder beneath their feet, groaning over every wave as if it were a beast in unendurable pain. 

The crew barely takes notice. The sails are wet but they are full _._ No man has to tie himself to the helm to keep the ship upright. All things considered, it is fair weather still. 

 _Could be worse_ , Silver thinks, blinking up at the broiling sky.  _When has a little rain deterred any man at sea?_  

Fate seems to take the question as a challenge. The storm draws back a few hours later as if the whole ordeal had been but a playful tease. In its wake, condensation hangs tender in the air and fog descends, swirling across the decks like smoke. For his part, Silver is just relieved to be able to walk around without risking a broken neck. That is, until he realizes that the sails have begun to sag. 

The storm has stolen the wind. The relentless gale that had been all but flying them to their destination has dropped to a balmy fucking breeze, pathetic puffs of air that nudge them forward inch by reluctant inch. The loss in speed is so great that Silver keeps leaning over the railing to stare at the cut of the sea against the hull, desperate for any discernible proof that they are still in fact moving. 

Bafflement, this time, and all around. The men's hands still; they begin to talk. Silver glares up at the sky. The whole thing feels like a cosmic fucking joke.

Jack loses his mind, right around the same time. He’s so tense that Silver can scarcely stand to be in the same room with him as he mutters under his breath about Philadelphia and the Guthries, dates and appointments he has promised to keep. Everything feels tenuous, breakable, so Silver tries to reason with him. Regrets it, almost immediately. 

“Oh _, please_ ,” Jack snaps. Vitriol drips off his tongue as if Silver is personally responsible for their current speed. “Don’t act like you aren’t happy about this.”

“Happy?” The day is almost gone, the sea sits around them as if it were a fucking pond, and the last thing in the world that Silver is right now is  _happy_. "You think I'm—exactly what the fuck do I have to be happy about?"

The corner of Jack's mouth twists up, ugly and knowing. Silver steels himself for a fight but Jack stalks over to a shelf and pulls out a map, shaking it loose before spreading it wide on the table. He bends low over it, ignoring Silver entirely. Silver stares at the top of Jack's floppy head of hair and feels himself edging towards anger in earnest. Time was, he remembers, when he considered the sentiment to be irrational. Futile and fundamentally stupid, like pissing into the wind. 

And yet. 

"May I remind you that I suggested you stay behind when we last made port?"

A long sigh. "Silver, don't—" 

"You didn't have to be on this ship," Silver says, and he itches to shout the rest as he steps around the table to catch Jack's eye, "You could have been in Philadelphia right now, attending to whatever fucking business you’ve cooked up for yourself instead of standing here and insinuating that I—" 

"I wasn't about to leave you  _alone_ with him," Jack cuts in, sharp. "Not that my being here makes any fucking difference, clearly."

"If you're referring to last night—"

"We had an agreement," Jack spits, over enunciating into the maps. "An understanding. And yet all it took for you to go back on your word was an hour with him in the hold." 

"He wasn't _eating!_ " Silver retorts, raising his voice, "What use is it to go all the way to Savannah if he starves to death on the way there?”

A tremulous beat of silence. “Good Christ.” Jack rubs at his forehead. "I never took you for an idiot, but you must be one if you think that is what concerns me here." 

Instantly Silver draws away from the table so that he can fight the urge to slam Jack's head into it. "Is that right? Well, I'm listening. Enlighten me." 

Finally, _finally_ Jack lifts his gaze, leveling Silver with an ice cold stare as he straightens up. "All right. What concerns me is that Flint is now walking around this ship unsupervised. What concerns me is that you didn’t think to tell me this _before_ you allowed it to happen. But above all _what fucking concerns me_ is that I know what he does to you every time you speak to him, I can see it in your face—Jesus Christ, Silver,  _everyone can see it_ , do you really think we're that stupid? Don't answer that. I know as a rule pirates aren't the most intelligent of creatures but they still  _talk_. And they have eyes, most of them. _Everyone knows._ How he gets to you, what he  _means—_ you and him, it’s—honestly, it's about as subtle as a fucking gun to the head. I can imagine what it's costing you, making this trip, truly, I—don't fucking look at me like  _that_ —it may sound like a load ofbollocks to you right now but believe it or not I've some experience with how this loss will sting. So with all that we have to lose, all that _I_ have to lose, I cannot for the life of me shake the feeling that if given evenhalf the chanceyou won’t just set him—"

Hand in the air gesticulating, Jack catches himself. There's a tense pause, the word left unsaid bouncing between them. Before long Jack's face twists again; going from a troubled grimace to something that seems so akin to sympathy—to pity _—_ that Silver wants to recoil from it. 

He doesn't get the chance. Jack turns on his heel without another word and walks out of the room, shaking his head as he goes. 

Silver avoids him for the rest of the day.

The men are even worse. With nothing better to do, they group together in dark corners and begin to whisper, voices swirling around the the ship like malevolent spirits;  _we’re cursed, it's a curse, it's Captain Flint that's done this, you mark my words—_

On reflex alone, Silver resists. He shakes his head and laughs it off and tries to ensure everyone within earshot that the wind will return, that they’ll begin to move again soon, that Savannah is home to the best brothels in the Americas as far as he's heard.  Universal truths hold fast; men need certainty and Silver dances the dance. But Jack’s crew does not know him, Jack’s crew does not respect him, and it soon becomes clear that Jack’s crew could not give less of a shit about him, actually, because they barely even lift their heads in the mess hall to listen to what he’s got to say. Only Ben and Hands deign to hear him out, though they both stand together in the corner quietly fuming; Ben over the losses he's suffered and Hands over Silver's perceived mercy. On an island miles from here, the late and great Long John Silver turns over in his grave along with his ever faithful and ever dead crew. 

It's a familiar feeling, being ignored. Not too long ago Silver considered the state a blessing. It made him invincible, untouchable, quietly lethal like a poisoned blade. All he knows of it now is a helpless rage sharpened with guilt, bouncing around inside of his rib cage with nowhere to go. 

It is with that very same rage that he finds himself pacing like a restless animal in the captain's cabin just before nightfall. He tries to will the ship to move beneath him to match his own erratic steps. The ship refuses to cooperate. Drawls lazily on, as if it has all the time in the world. 

Silver's leg _aches_. He refuses to sit. He lifts his head to look out of the window and the ocean stretches out, flat and dark and maddeningly quiet. Skeleton Island is long behind them and Savannah still far ahead and this pause in between the two feels darkly fated; a moment suspended, cleaved clean out of time. 

 _This is punishment_.  _It's_   _fucking purgatory._ The thought freezes Silver mid-step. Only a day without wind and reason has already abandoned him. Stick an inordinate amount of men into a tiny cramped space and this was bound to happen, surely. Perhaps superstition was catching like the plague. 

Time passes inexorably onwards. The sun has dipped well below the horizon and the sky is casting a muted blue tint into the cabin when the door behind Silver slowly creaks open. 

"I'm not in the mood, Jack," he warns, staring hard at the water. “If you say another word I swear to  _God_ I'll—"

“Evening.” 

The threat trips back down Silver's knotted throat. “Out for a stroll?” he asks, after a beat. 

"Not quite." Flint says. He enters the cabin and shuts the squealing door behind him. "I heard we lost the wind." 

This is new; Flint walking freely onboard. It would have been unthinkable a few days ago, leaving him unshackled like this. The Flint that Silver had first met—the one that sank Dufresne's captaincy armed only with a few choice words spoken at the right time—that Flint would have by now concocted some bloody scheme to take the reigns of Jack's ship. That Flint would have likely succeeded in the endeavour even if he were being kept under lock and key. 

Only Flint hasn't been that Flint for some time, now. Since the hold, since Silver had nearly begged him to eat. Since before; for longer than Silver wants to think about. 

"Yes, we lost the wind,” Silver says, a shade too loud. He squints out of the window as if his eyes will catch on a single thing but the flat expanse of the sea. "Jack's throwing a fit about it. This is my fault somehow, as far as he's concerned. I've apparently the power to bend the weather to my will, did you know? Because it is fucking news to me." 

The floor creaks, yielding beneath Flint's boots. “Would that make you Poseidon, then?" 

Silver snorts. "If the shoe fits." 

It's uncanny—instinctual as breathing—the way the hairs on the back of Silver's neck stand up to attention as Flint approaches. It calls to him now, loud, near deafening; the nameless reflex to turn around. To look at Flint, to see his face, to gauge and measure and understand. 

To be understood. 

Clenching his teeth, Silver resists. Keeps his eyes on the horizon and suddenly knows; knows with a horrifying clarity that this is how he will spend the rest of his days; constantly aware of Flint's absence as he has always been of his presence. Staring at a void as impossible to ignore as Flint has always been. The loss threatens to level him before it has even come to pass. 

Flint comes to rest next to Silver with both hands clasped behind his back. His gaze is fixed out of the window, his back ramrod straight. He's about a hand's length away; their shoulders could touch if one of them were to slightly lean and close the gap. The distance seems deliberate. Silver does not dare breach it. 

"Any particular reason for this hostility?"

Thrown, for a moment, Silver thinks Flint is speaking of something else. He catches on fast enough and rushes to cover the pause. "Jack is under the impression that I do not wish to see this voyage through to its end."

Flint considers this in silence. Silver is taking care not to look at him directly but he can see Flint's ghost; backlit in blue and reflected in the windows. 

"Is he right?" Flint asks. He slants a look at Silver in the glass, impassive as the sea. 

His gaze is like a weight. Silver's neck tenses; the urge to run pulls. " _Christ_ , not you, too. Of course not. I'm not glad for this, if that's what you're asking."

The light plays across Flint's face, and his eyes narrow slightly before he looks away again. They stand there, almost shoulder to shoulder, for a few minutes of silence. The fog descends further around the windows of the cabin as if conspiring to press them closer together.

"The men seem to think we're cursed," Flint murmurs, his breath ghosting over the glass. 

"The men always think we're cursed," Silver returns. "Fuck the men." 

He realises only after he’s spoken that there’s no spite in his tone as he’d intended. Instead he just sounds exhausted. There's a lilting silence again, swaying one way and another. It lasts just a shade too long for there to be an agreeable reply. Chancing another look at Flint's reflection, Silver sees that he is frowning thoughtfully, face shadowed in the twilight. 

"I’m sorry," Silver says, bracing on his crutch to turn towards him, "Am I to understand that you agree? You  _actually_ think we're cursed?" 

Flint doesn't reply. Even that's enough. 

“Oh, for  _fuck’s sake."_

The words are scarcely out of Silver’s mouth before Flint starts to turn, “Don’t be ridiculous, you know me better than—that."

Bodies curved towards one another like brackets, they stare at each other. This close, Flint's eyes faintly glow, catching the dying light off the sea. His expression is inscrutable until it unfurls; he frowns, presses his lips together. Silver feels a pull to speak, pull to _lean_ —God, he wants to rest his forehead against Flint’s one last time—but Flint's already turning away, saying, “I put no stock in superstition. I would, however, be remiss if I did not point out that it is highly unusual to suddenly drop out of the trade winds given our current bearings. Nigh unheard of, even.”

Disbelief overpowers every other feeling in Silver's chest so he lets himself openly stare at Flint’s profile. “Maybe it’s the hour or the lack of sleep—you  _still_ don’t sound like you disagree with them." 

“I’m only trying to give an explanation for the state of the men. Their paranoia, in this particular case, is understandable." Flint pauses, before adding, "Somewhat."

This, too, is incredible, unbelievable; Flint defending the men against him. The world has truly shifted. Everything will be different—fucking unrecognizable—going forward. 

When it becomes evident that Flint will not elaborate further, Silver lets his eyes drift to the sea. The cabin is too quiet again. Airless. It feels isolating and monumental, like they are at the edge of the world, looking out. But not together; Silver stares at the precipice and  _wants,_ senselessly, to lean into Flint's side. He is somehow sure that it would let him breathe easier, that the stubborn fucking knot at the base of his throat would untangle if only he could only feel Flint at his shoulder. As if that would help, as if that wouldn't make it _worse_. 

Abruptly, Flint asks, "Do you remember when we were becalmed? What you said to me?"  

Silver feels the trap coming. The same way he feels all traps coming; a twisting warning in his stomach, urging an immediate change in direction. “Remember?" he says, pitching his voice upwards. "I'm not entirely certain I’ve even gained the weight back yet.”

The corner of Flint’s mouth looks like it wants to edge into a smile but the rest of his face resists. He makes a gentle noise of disagreement instead, his eyes flitting over to Silver's again in the window. 

The humour concealed in his gaze is a relief. It's a fucking lifeline. "Hold on a minute—" Silver says, "Are you calling me fat?"

Flint chokes on a startled laugh. "I'm fairly certain that's not what I was implying." 

"What were you implying?" 

"Only that you gained the weight back."

"Well, that doesn't sound altogether different from—"

" _John_. Stop."

His name falls out of Flint's mouth on a whisper, but it might as well have been a shout the way it halts Silver in his tracks. 

Watching Silver carefully now, Flint says, "You feared then that I had conjured you into a storm, do you remember?" 

"Yes," Silver says, and it barely makes its way past his throat to be heard. "Yes, I remember." 

He feels as though he's being dragged, kicking and screaming into something he would never look at in the light if he were given a choice. 

Flint says, "I fear the same, now." 

There's a beat. The trap is sprung. 

"Can we just, please—“ Silver sputters, not knowing what he wants at all, but the second he meets Flint’s eyes he stops. Flint looks tired, and sad, and still somehow inexplicably fond _—_ all three at once and more—and Silver wants to shake him, wishes he would be  _angry_ , wishes Flint would yell, _fight;_ fight him. If given enough time Silver's sure he could drag that out of him, turn the expression on Flint's face into something easier to look at; twist out the rage and the hurt and ugly broken trust that he knows is in there, broiling in Flint just beneath the surface and running God knows how deep, only there isn't. Enough time. 

"We could," Flint says lightly. "I could. But surely you must know we're running out of time."

In the receding light, Flint's eyes are quiet. Frighteningly earnest. Silver recoils from the thought, sometimes; the idea that he and Flint share a mind, but in moments like these it feels frighteningly possible; it feels fucking  _true_. He can feel Flint in his head, always, in his blood, in his bones and marrow, unshakable and irreplaceable. 

"What would you have me do?" he asks, miserable; tired. 

"Nothing," Flint says, and he turns back towards the window. "Only for you to say what you wish to say before you no longer can. Perhaps that's the reason for this." 

Silver turns from the ghost in the glass to the man by his side. "Are you saying the wind left so we could talk to one another?" 

Flint raises a shoulder into a shrug, before he knocks gently into Silver's side. "Superstition is catching, isn't it?" 

* * *

Hours have passed, they must have. The bottle of rum they stole from Jack's stores is half-way gone, and yet the day has not broken, the wind has not picked up. The sea is still flat as salt around them, the ship unmoving beneath them. 

They are, however, getting somewhere. 

"This place you were speaking of, this plantation,” Flint says, looking up from where he’s seated in the chair across from Silver, "You intend to sell them my servitude, is that it?” 

"You can say it,” he prompts, when Silver stays silent. "There’s no point in holding back now.” 

At length Silver clears his throat and manages, “Yes.” He pauses for a moment, breathing. “I intend to buy your place there.” 

Slowly, deliberately, Flint nods, turning his gaze down into the mug in his hands.

 _Tell me you understand,_ Silver wants to say. He wants to beg. _Tell me you see that I've no other choice._ Instead he says, "I do not for one moment believe you will stay there for very long, however.” 

Leaning back in his seat a little, Flint hums contemplatively. "You think I'll break out? Why? You will have ended this war effort once and for all by the time I do. What use would there be?" 

"What _use—_ " Silver catches himself; decides against saying the name again for fear of evoking a reaction. He grips his drink a little tighter in his hand. "You will break out because _he_ will be there. Even if you don’t wish to free yourself, you will free him. I know you will. And afterwards you two will live out the rest of your days as you please." 

Flint tips his chin up and regards him for a long moment over the rim of his mug. There's a tenseness around his eyes, the set to his mouth, that seems to soften the longer he looks. At the end of it, Silver can feel the way Flint's gaze turns inwards, examining whatever conclusion he has reached. It's one that is inaccessible to Silver now, he cannot figure it out no matter how hard he tries.

So much for sharing one mind. 

"What is it?" he asks at last, his voice hushed. He leans forward over the desk slightly. "Tell me what you're thinking." 

Flint frowns, mostly to himself. "A number of things," he says, evasively. "First among them being that I don't believe you."

"Flint—"

" _Don't_ ," Flint cuts in, a little harsher. He takes a quick swing of his rum and when he speaks again his tone has gentled. "I don't believe you, and I'm not going to. In that regard there's nothing you can do. You're a fool to even try." 

There's a moment of silence. The cabin creaks around them; Silver strains himself to hear anything but the ship settling, desperate for some footsteps on the deck above them to indicate a change in the wind, to indicate some way out of this. Nothing.

He feels helpless, suddenly, _trapped_ , and the memory comes to him unbidden; Sister Margaret leaning close to him, as if divulging a secret. Her kind eyes on him, her soft hand taking Silver's own, bloodied one, her other one gently brushing his hair out of his bruised face. _If you keep on like this, chico,_ she had said, _some day soon there will be wolves at your door, and there will not be a soul on God's green earth who believes you when you cry. You wouldn't want that, would you?_

 _I'm not lying,_ Silver had said, though his name had neither been John nor Silver then. He'd wanted to repeat it again and again and again until his tongue turned to stone.  _I'm not lying. I'm not._

She'd chuckled, almost despite herself, and Silver had felt bile rise in his throat.  _Oh, child. Little boys like you always lie._

"What else, then?" Silver finally concedes, and Flint's clear eyes meet his own once more. "You don't believe me, that I understand. I accept it. But there's something else you wish to say, and I can tell you aren't saying it."

"What gives you the right to know?" Flint snaps suddenly, just on this side of angry. _In my head, you're not welcome,_ Silver thinks, and it’s absurd that he wants to laugh. 

"This was your idea,” he says, evenly. “The wind needs the truth to blow, remember?" 

"Are you saying you agree with me now?” Flint raises an eyebrow. “You agree with the men?" 

"I am  _saying_ ," Silver says, breaking eye contact with the pretense of refilling his glass with rum. "It can't hurt to try. We can attempt to appease the Gods, surely, even if they don't exist." 

Flint huffs, a sound between a scoff and a sneer. Then he hesitates, and that's when Silver can see it again, the truth on the tip of his tongue. There in his fidgeting hands. "I cannot face him," Flint says, in a small, rough voice, like a weight is sitting on his chest. His thumb tucks between his fingers to roll his ring reflexively. "Even if—even if this isn't some elaborate ruse, even if you are not _lying to me_ , like you have been for months now, I cannot—how could I? I'm not the man he remembers. I am not the man he—I am not a man he could _ever_ —" 

He cuts off on a tremulous exhale and half-rises from his seat at the same time, leaning forward to take the bottle of rum from where it sits next to Silver's elbow. Silver watches him come closer and it is then that the instinct seizes him, by the throat like an animal trashing to dig its teeth in. Before he knows what he's doing he's taking Flint by the wrist; his warm, warm wrist, still crusted with blood, his skin torn and bruised, and Silver feels nausea roil through him again when he touches the scars of his own making, feels it flare wide in his sea-sick stomach. 

"He _could_ ," Silver says, and Flint tenses over him like a bowstring. "He could. He _would_."

"And how the fuck would you know?”

The desperation that breaks Flint's voice is unmistakable, despite everything. The flare of fury in his eyes is more blatant a cover than any Silver has ever seen. He relaxes his hold on Flint's wrist to accommodate for it, but doesn't entirely let go, his own hand functioning only as a buffer between Flint's and the surface of the table now. Flint can pull back at any time. He doesn't move. 

"Because I do," Silver says, quietly. All else is so silent he feels as though he's screaming it. "I do, just as I imagine he did, once. And he will again. No matter his sins, Captain James Flint is not as hard to love as you think." 

He would have missed Flint's faint tremble if they hadn't been touching. He would have missed the way Flint's breath leaves his mouth then, when Silver swipes his thumb over his skin; stuttered, the air shivering between them as if something has broken loose.

It is not the first time he has said it. He’d implied as much in the hold, when they were on their knees together; it had been clear, he thought, when they woke up together hours later still tangled up in one another. And yet, still, Flint's entire body goes slack in Silver’s hands, now, whatever stubborn uncertainty he was feeling flushed out of him by a gust of—

The cabin around them shakes as if breached by a burst of canon fire. Startled, they both look up at the same time just as a stampede of footsteps erupt above them, men shouting, cheering, whistling like a pack of beasts. Silver stands, and Flint draws back, and they meet at the edge of the world again, both of them scrambling to look out of the back windows into the impenetrable darkness. The flag is fluttering, if only faintly. The sea comes alive beneath their feet with a hiss, licking the hull leisurely as if it had never left and Silver, he—fucking  _laughs_ , he can't help it, the sudden wave of disbelief and hysteria that hits him. Superstition is catching. It's definitely fucking catching. 

He's still laughing when Flint steps close, and Flint's eyes are smiling, lit bright in the moonlight when Silver looks up to meet them. A pale hand reaches out and Silver’s laughter dies in his throat; he would think it a phantom if it weren’t so gentle on the side of his face, Flint’s thumb grazing back and forth over his ear again and again. Silver leans into it, briefly consumed, before he comes to his senses, takes Flint by the front of his shirt, and pulls him into a kiss.

That is the first and last time he kisses him.  

(Or so he thinks. God, after all, works in mysterious ways.)


End file.
